Posted on 04/26/2008 3:27:38 PM PDT by joan
26 April 2008 | 00:38 | FOCUS News Agency
The Hague. The international court for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia said Friday it had charged a Kosovar minister for bullying a witness in the controversial trial of one of Kosovo's former leaders, AFP reported.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) charged Culture Minister Astrit Araqija with contempt of court, along with his adviser Bajrush Morina. The two were members of war crimes suspect and former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj's defence team.
The charge dates to January 8 but was only made public on Friday.
Charges against the two were triggered by events in July and August 2007, when the politicians tried in vain to convince an anonymous witness not to appear in court.
Police recorded conversations indicating that Morina even travelled to the witness's country of residence, at the Ministry of Culture's expense.
ping
26 April 2008 The Hague_ The Prosecution of the UN War Crimes Tribunal has indicted a former Kosovo minister and a journalist for their role in the Haradinaj trial. The former Culture Minister in the Kosovo government, Astrit Haraqia and editor of daily Bota Sot, Bajrush Morina, have been charged with contempt of court by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, at the Hague.
The indictment alleges that the pair tried to persuade a witness not to testify in the war crimes trial against Ramush Haradinaj, Kosovo’s former Prime Minister.
Haradinaj was acquitted by the Tribunal earlier this month, of charges accusing him of taking part in a conspiracy to drive Serbs out of Kosovo through murder, rape and torture. Read more: http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/9128
The court statement says the witness in question was granted protection in 2005 and his unedited statements were disclosed only to Haradinaj, his two co-defendants and their lawyers.
According to the document Haraqia was one of the co-founders of the "Defence committee for Ramush Haradinaj" and upon learning of the identity of the witness in July, he instructed Morina to travel to the witness's country of residence to persuade him not to testify against Haradinaj. Morina met the witness on a trip paid for by the ministry, prosecutors allege.
"The witness refused to succumb to the pressure and eventually testified at the trial," the court said.
The contempt indictment was first filed to the court in January, and was disclosed to the public on Friday evening. The Hague Tribunal has not specified when both will appear in the court.
During Haradinaj’s trail there were widespread allegations of witnesses being intimidated, and several pulled out, resulting in complaints by former top war crimes prosecutor, Carla del Ponte.
Imagine that, mafiosi threatening witnesses!
Next on the news; grass is green and the sky is blue!
This just in, bears poop in the woods! Film at 11!!!!
And the mafioso are the ones in the government (Culture Minister) and the editor of a popular newspaper in Kosovo. NATO sure established these people on top, along with the murder-rapist Haradinaj, ethnic cleanser Ceku (and Ceku’s brother was the one noted to run concentration camps in Kosovo after NATO/KLA took over), and so on.
Did you catch this little article, The Shot Heard Round the Sofa? It's a classic -- notice the "Albanian apologetics" by the author, trying to hide what is oh-so obvious, that she is sitting next to Kosovo's Muslim version of "Don Corleone", Ramush Hardinaj's father!
Bump!
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